She nodded, and spoke before he could answer the nod.
"Of course I might not have stayed contented long, if you hadn't been like that too. You are, aren't you?"
His hands had slipped up her arms to her shoulders, and it sent a pang of wild joy through her content to feel them trembling while they held her.
"Contented? No, by God, I'm not! Contented's as much as saying I could have enough of you. But I've loved you ever since I heard you calling Zola in that wonderful voice of yours. Before I even saw your face close, your 'Gorgon! Gorgon!' gave me a pain I was afraid of, because I wanted to be hurt again. It made me angry. You've been waking me up at four in the morning and never letting me sleep again. You've filled my head with pictures—a whole cinema of pictures; and my ears with sounds! Your dress on the stairs; your voice calling 'Dad! dad!' from the garden, and humming little tunes I'd never heard till you sang 'em, coming in with your arms full of leaves and flowers. Seems like months you've filled me, and it's only four days. No, I'm not contented, Amaryllis, but I'm damned happy."
Then his arms crossed each other round her body; and it seemed to Amaryllis that she sank away into space filled with an ecstasy; and that, after a while, which was not time, she was fetched back into time and to earth by hands so strong that they had brought the ecstasy with them also.
There were kisses, not all his.
Then, to focus her joy, she thrust it away from her; and, seeing Dick Bellamy's countenance, she remembered how he had spoken of what he had found, when he awoke, in hers.
His eyes shone upon her as she now knew she had always wished them to shine. Splendid eyes, she had called them in that part of herself where she had for a long time—quite two days—made pretence of deafness; eyes very blue and firm, but seldom, until now, to be long held.
"Dick," she said, "that's the first time—just what I wanted."
"What?" he asked.